During a 13-year career, Georges Laraque said he often had to drop the gloves not only against the NHL’s toughest players, but also against the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

“Quite early in my career I started asking the (National Hockey League Players’ Association) to take action against all the performance-enhancing drugs some players would use to become bigger in order to stop feeling the pain,” Laraque writes in The Story of the NHL’s Unlikeliest Tough Guy, a new autobiography published by Viking Canada, excerpts of which were reprinted in the Toronto Star.

“The job was hard and harsh enough not to have to compete against ‘killers’ swollen with steroids. The NHLPA listened to me, but refused to take any action on that front, for obvious political reasons. They wanted to keep drug testing as a card in their negotiations with the league.”

Laraque, who piled up 1,126 penalty minutes as one of the NHL’s most feared fighters, writes that the use of drugs created an uneven playing field for pugilists.

“The use of steroids by tough guys makes it unfair for the ones who decide to remain clean,” he writes. “But even more than steroids, some other drugs would really make fighting even more dangerous for the clean ones like me. Substances like Ephedrine, for instance, totally desensitize the player who takes them.

“Before a game, as I would warm up on the ice, I would always look at the tough guy on the other side. If his arms were trembling, if his eyes were bulging, I knew for sure he wasn’t going to feel any of the punches I would give him. Totally anaesthetized, his face sweating despite the thick film of Vaseline he’d covered his face with, I knew the guy would be able to take a lot more hits than his fair share.”

Laraque refused to single out enforcers and non-enforcers alike who were guilty of drug abuse, but “I can give you some clues here that will help you identify the ones using steroids, if you really feel like it. First, you just have to notice how some talented players will experience an efficiency loss as well as a weight loss every four years, those years being the ones where the Winter Olympics are held.

“In the following season they make a strong comeback; they manage a mysterious return to form.”

To its credit, Laraque says the NHL has better addressed the issue in the years leading up to his 2010 retirement and his subsequent career as deputy leader of the federal Green Party.

“In my final years in the NHL, the league finally decided to set clear and precise rules against the use of any performance enhancing drugs,” he writes. “I was relieved, and found it funny how much weight some players had lost in just one year.

“Nowadays, the fight has moved to another level. Hockey, as well as any other sport in the world, has to take action against the human growth hormone that players have been using for a couple of years now.”